Thesauri on the Web: current developments and trends

This article provides an overview of recent developments relating to the application of thesauri in information organisation and retrieval on the World Wide Web. It describes some recent thesaurus projects undertaken to facilitate resource description and discovery and access to wide-ranging information resources on the Internet. Types of thesauri available on the Web, thesauri integrated in databases and information retrieval systems, and multiple-thesaurus systems for cross-database searching are also discussed. Collective efforts and events in addressing the standardisation and novel applications of thesauri are briefly reviewed

Memories for Life: A Review of the Science and Technology

This paper discusses scientific, social and technological aspects of memory. Recent developments in our understanding of memory processes and mechanisms, and their digital implementation, have placed the encoding, storage, management and retrieval of information at the forefront of several fields of research. At the same time, the divisions between the biological, physical and the digital worlds seem to be dissolving. Hence opportunities for interdisciplinary research into memory are being created, between the life sciences, social sciences and physical sciences. Such research may benefit from immediate application into information management technology as a testbed. The paper describes one initiative, Memories for Life, as a potential common problem space for the various interested disciplines

Special issue on soft computing applications to intelligent information retrieval on the Internet

This special issue encompasses eleven papers devoted to the recent developments in the applications of soft computing (SC) techniques to information retrieval (IR), both in the text and Web retrieval areas. The seed of the current issue were some of the presentations made in two special sessions organized by the guest editors in two different conferences: the First Spanish Conference on Evolutionary and Bioinspired Algorithms (AEB’02), that was held in M erida, Spain, February 2002, and the Seventh International ISKO Conference (ISKO’02), held in Granada, Spain, July 2002. The scope of both special sessions was pretty related. In the former conference, the session topic was ‘‘Applications of Evolutionary Computation to Information Retrieval’’ while in the latter the session was entitled ‘‘Artificial Intelligence Applications to Information Retrieval’’

Database search vs. information retrieval : a novel method for studying natural language querying of semi-structured data

The traditional approach of querying a relational database is via a formal language, namely SQL. Recent developments in the design of natural language interfaces to databases show promising results for querying either with keywords or with full natural language queries and thus render relational databases more accessible to non-tech savvy users. Such enhanced relational databases basically use a search paradigm which is commonly used in the field of information retrieval. However, the way systems are evaluated in the database and the information retrieval communities often differs due to a lack of common benchmarks. In this paper, we provide an adapted benchmark data set that is based on a test collection originally used to evaluate information retrieval systems. The data set contains 45 information needs developed on the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), including corresponding relevance assessments. By mapping this benchmark data set to a relational database schema, we enable a novel way of directly comparing database search techniques with information retrieval. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we present an experimental evaluation that compares SODA, a keyword-enabled relational database system, against the Terrier information retrieval system and thus lays the foundation for a future discussion of evaluating database systems that support natural language interfaces

Supporting collaboration and engagement using a whiteboard-like display

Large interactive display surfaces have the potential to combine the simplicity, spontaneity and presence of a conventional whiteboard with the convenience, clarity, and archiving and retrieval capabilities of a computer display. Recent developments in display projection and large surface digitising have brought the cost of such displays to a level where they can be utilised to support a range of everyday activities. This paper describes the LIDS (Large Interactive Display Surfaces) project, recently commenced at the University of Waikato. LIDS focuses on the use of low-cost whiteboard-like shared interactive displays, and is exploring whiteboard metaphors and lightweight interaction techniques to support group collaboration and engagement. Three closely related application areas are being studied: (i) support for single and multiple site meetings and informal discussions, (ii) the use of such displays in teaching, and (iii) their use in personal information management

Precision-Recall Curves Using Information Divergence Frontiers

Despite the tremendous progress in the estimation of generative models, the development of tools for diagnosing their failures and assessing their performance has advanced at a much slower pace. Recent developments have investigated metrics that quantify which parts of the true distribution is modeled well, and, on the contrary, what the model fails to capture, akin to precision and recall in information retrieval. In this paper, we present a general evaluation framework for generative models that measures the trade-off between precision and recall using R\'enyi divergences. Our framework provides a novel perspective on existing techniques and extends them to more general domains. As a key advantage, this formulation encompasses both continuous and discrete models and allows for the design of efficient algorithms that do not have to quantize the data. We further analyze the biases of the approximations used in practice.Comment: Updated to the AISTATS 2020 versio

Mandatory accounting disclosure by small private companies

This article analyzes how mandatory accounting disclosure is grounded on different rationales for private and public companies. It also explores technological changes, such as computerised databases and the Internet, which have recently made disclosure of company accounts by small companies potentially less costly and more valuable, thanks to electronic filing and universal online access to credit information systems. These recent developments favour policies that would expand the scope of mandatory publication for small companies in countries where it is voluntary. They also encourage policies to reduce the costs and enhance the value of disclosure through administrative reforms of filing, archive and retrieval systems. Survey and registry evidence on how the information in the accounts is valued and used by companies is consistent with these claims about the evolution of the tradeoff of costs and benefits that should guide policy in this area.Financial disclosure, company accounts, credit registries, business simplification